Copper Bones
by browntrowsers
Summary: Amateur explorer Chester Copperpot has a lot to gain and everything to lose from finding One-Eyed Willy's infamous treasure, which is rumored to be buried somewhere along the Columbia River between Washington State and Oregon. But will he find the rumored fortune buried in the caves, and will it be enough to establish his reputation as an adventurer in the truest sense?


Chester Copperpot gazed across the drab water, through the mist and fog, to Haystack Rock jutting out of the Columbia River. The giant boulder disturbed him, reminding him of an upside-down shark tooth, albeit the size of a small island. He pulled a jagged metal doubloon from his pocket and held it out at arms length. From where he stood, Copperpot could see that Haystack Rock, along with a nearby inn and the adjacent lighthouse, all fit precisely in the coin's chinks.

 _Well I'll be damned_ , he thought. _Walsh was right._

The Lighthouse Inn had seen better days. A decade before, he had been dragged there with some friends who were visiting from out of town. It was the sort of place where wealthy brats could drink and gamble and dance until the sun crept up in the exact spot where the river disappeared in the East, where hard alcohol was served in wide glasses and swing bands played four nights each week.

Back then, he was only just beginning his research on the mysteries of the Pacific Northwest—its native people and lost explorers and pirates, its secrets and mythologies. Back then, the local historians and professors would still answer his letters, engage in rich discussions, consider his ideas without derision or ridicule. Back then, he could still walk into a place like the Lighthouse Inn without being being mocked, called a scavenger or hermit, or even chased out.

Ten years later, the Inn looked silent, sleepy—not quite rundown, but certainly on the downswing. As Copperpot stepped through the front door, Abe Walsh greeted him with a nervous smile—he had obviously been waiting for the explorer. Without uttering a word, he motioned Copperpot to follow him through a mostly empty dining room and past the Inn's sole patron—a man hunched over his newspaper and chomping on a pipe. "Chester Copperpot!" he shouted just as Walsh ducked into the back.

Copperpot stopped short of the swinging kitchen doors and turned to address the man, whose mustache and steely glare he recognized. "Good evening, Sam," he said.

"Chester Copperpot," the man repeated, pulling his pipe from his mouth with an enormous, grizzled paw. Beside his cup of coffee, a floppy fisherman's hat dried on the table. "Boy, I didn't think I'd ever see you again."

"You and I both," Copperpot said.

"Still hunting for gold, are you?"

"As a matter of fact I am," Copperpot said, then allowed a weak smile to settle on his face. "In fact, I'm closer than ever."

"Bah!" Sam snorted, and broke into laughter. "Chester Copperpot, you'll always be the Looney of the Goon Docks, won't you?"

The smile firmed on Copperpot's face as he tipped his fedora and pulled his backpack a little higher on his shoulder. "Good night, Sam." He could still hear the fisherman laughing as the doors swayed shut behind. Ahead of him, Walsh walked past the stove, nodded to a sweating, red-faced cook, and led Copperpot through a darkened doorway to the lower level.

"He doesn't know nothing, does he?" Walsh stammered, leading his comrade down the creaking stairs and into a dusty basement that smelled like old bread and stale coffee beans. Light filtered into the dark, shadowy place through the dining room's floorboards overhead.

"No," Copperpot said, shaking his unshaven face from side to side. "He's never known anything about anything, not as long as I've known him."

"Good," Walsh said, then took a deep, stabilizing breath. He led the amateur explorer to a corner where dry goods were stored—where shelves bowed beneath the weight of dozen burlap sacks and shadows obscured towers of glass jars.

Copperpot studied his friend, whose slender arms knotted in front of his chest in what might have be interpreted as an intimidation attempt if the man hadn't been trembling. Even in the shadows, Copperpot could see Walsh's eyes hopping from shelf to shelf, from his shoes to a spot just over his shoulder—anywhere but his eyes. He hadn't known Walsh long, but his interactions with him had always been amicable, friendly, professional. But even if he didn't trust Walsh, what other choice did he have?

"Well?" Copperpot said. "Where is it?"

"First I need to take the doubloon back," Walsh said. "And the map."

"Nonsense," Copperpot snorted. "We made no such agreement."

"In my letter, I made clear that I would only share with you if you would share with me." His tone was sharp, desperate.

Copperpot chuckled. "And that's still the deal," he said. "In fact, we can even split it 80/20."

"80/20?! That's absurd. There's no way that I'm only taking—"

"You can have eighty percent, Walsh," Copperpot interrupted. "I only want twenty percent, and I may accept even less. I've already told you, I'm not interested in wealth. All I'm interested in is finding Willy—his treasure, his ship, whatever he has hidden here in the Goon Docks. You can have the lion's share so long as Chester Copperpot is credited with its discovery."

Walsh stroked his clean-shaven chin. "Well, I suppose that is agreeable," he murmured. "Still, I must insist on taking the doubloon and map—as collateral."

"I'm sorry, Walsh. I can't. Both the doubloon and the map may serve me well on my journey. Who knows what obstacles I'll find in these caves. One-Eyed Willy was a notorious trickster." Copperpot turned around to inspect the basement, but found little beside shadows. On his right, the stairs led back upstairs. On his left, he saw a strange sitting area; here, dappled by shadows, a lounge stretched before a burnt out fireplace and two chairs flanked a crooked dining table. Ahead of him, he spied an ominous, darkened freezer. "Where is the passageway anyways."

Behind him, he heard Walsh sigh. "Beneath the hearth," he said, suddenly steady, as if he had made a stabilizing decision.

Copperpot shuffled to the fireplace and tugged the hearth aside. Beneath it, he saw a chute in the bedrock leading straight down into a dusty darkness. Soot and ashes stained the passage hopelessly black, and the air flowed cool from the connecting tunnels.

"You'll need this then," Walsh said, handing a skull-shaped hunk of metal.

"The Copper Bones!" Copperpot crooned, his eyes shining in the darkness. His fingers danced across square eyes a his thumb rubbed he patinaed surface. Stretching the length of his open palm, it felt substantial in his hands, heavy with age and importance. "This, my friend, is the Crown Jewel of pirate lore. Wherever did you find it?"

"That, my friend, shall remain my secret." Walsh cast his gaze over his shoulder toward the stairs. "Now, I must to return to my duties at the front of the house or else someone will come searching for us." He turned toward Copperpot and flashed him a strange, wild smile. "Well, good luck, then."

"I shall not need your luck," Copperpot said, patting his wallet in his back pocket. "I have Lou Gehrig's luck protecting me from Willy's curse."

In reply, Walsh's smile widened into something less strange, softened into some more sympathetic. His two hand landed Copperpot's shoulders. "Well, be safe nonetheless."

Copperpot grasped Walsh's wrists and squeezed. "Thank you," he said. "I couldn't have done this without you."

He wasted no time sliding feet first down the passageway. As he did so, soot and ash from the fireplace and smeared across his face and lifted into the air, causing him to cough uncontrollably, to clench shut his eyes, to lose his handgrip and slip to the tunnel floor ten feet below. Though he landed hard on his side, he found himself able to stand once he had sufficiently calmed his convulsing lungs.

Copperpot tiptoed through the tunnel, through its even stone walls and colossal silence, until dim light from above was no longer enough to illuminate his path. He dismounted his backpack, placed it onto the stone ground, and fished his hands past sticks of dynamite, the map and doubloon, his trusty canteen until he felt the cool metal of his flashlight—a device he had sought and purchased specially for this expedition.

His pack back onto his shoulder, Copperpot swept the flashlight's beam across his path as he walked, nothing the smooth stone become less even with each step, the coarse ceiling dropping further as he descended deeper. Spiderwebs stretched across his face, stuck to his stubble and hat; they tangled so thick across his walkway that he swung the electric torch to cut himself a path as if it were a machete and he was slicing through a South American jungle.

In his other hand, he clutched the Copper Bones. Holding it made him feel powerful, invincible.

After fifty yards, the slim passageway opened vertically, and the cave's ceiling climbed so high that his flashlight's beam was too weak to reach the space's distant corners. This shift in landscape caused Copperpot to pause. Though the rest of the world still considered him an amateur, he had acquired an explorer's sensibility and knew such shifts, however subtle, required special consideration.

He took a deep breath before stepping into the space, confident and curious, looking underfoot for clues of this new space's significance. When his beam landed on a lateral hump in the dust a step ahead of him, he bent down and blew a puff of air onto the anomaly. The dust cleared, reveling a line of tattered twine—a tripwire, a booby trap, one of Willy's tricks. Copperpot then shined is flashlight overhead and discovered the boulders swinging slowly, precariously, above the passageway through which he had just walked.

He smirked. I outwitted One-Eyed Willy, he thought.

Only when he reached the far end of the tunnel did he hear a series of subtle scraping noises behind him—slight, gentle, skipping off the stone walls. Copperpot had only enough time to perceive the lantern flickering on the opposite side of the tunnel before his body seized with pressure and pain. Somehow, the ground slammed to his face; the reverberating stone shook through his skull to his very soul. He heard a squeal reverberating through the chamber, felt his throat rattle and burn, but was unaware that the sound was his screaming, unaware that his body had been crushed beneath one of the enormous boulders.

Copperpot couldn't move his feet or legs, couldn't feel his body beneath his chest, though some part of him was aware of his flailing, his arms slapping the rocks, his head wagging in agony. He dared not open his eyes, lest his brain attempt make sense of the numb pain bleeding through his body. Instead, he squeezed the Copper Bones like a rosary or a cross, the idol that meant more to him than the search itself.

As he coughed warm copper, as his body seemed to evaporate into the cavern's ancient air, Copperpot's eyes cracked open. Here, in his final moments of consciousness, he became aware of a presence, a ghost who crouched beside him, rifled through his bag. "Where is it? Where is it?" the presence repeated, the map already crumpled under his arm, the doubloon clenched between his teeth. It was Walsh, of course. Why hadn't he anticipated this betrayal?

Copperpot heard the clatter of boulders above his head, saw them swinging in his periphery before shutting his eyes. "Dammit, dammit, dammit!" the presence screeched. "Where are the Copper Bones, Chester! Where are they?" But soon, he heard Walsh skitter away, cursing with every step.

No longer able to hold on, Copperpot felt the weight of his life lift from his broken body. As he did so, he made his final conscious decision: to clutch the Copper Bones as hard as he could for as long as they could so that the next adventurer who came across it would have to pry it from his bony, lifeless fingers.


End file.
